


No Peace

by eleanor_lavish, thepsychicclam



Series: Valiant Effort [7]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-18
Updated: 2009-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-28 03:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanor_lavish/pseuds/eleanor_lavish, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepsychicclam/pseuds/thepsychicclam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy loves to write in the city. Almost as much as he doesn't love Orlando.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Written by EL.

Writing songs was an art and writing lyrics was like poetry—hard, but he liked to think it took a certain gift. Writing the KIND of music he did, Billy got very little respect, especially from the suits he worked with, with their BA’s in English and Britney Spears in their headphones. He had tried to explain his musical influences once or twice to a sympathetic ear but it was hard to find anyone who listened to the Ramones, much less the Pogues, or Flogging Molly, or any number of even more obscure UK punk and rock and drunken folk bands.

He comforted himself with the thought that these bastards wouldn’t know real music if it bit them in the arse. They followed MTV like fucking lemmings and called in to the radio to win tickets to Smashmouth. Billy would consider Smashmouth the opening act in Hell. With O-Town headlining.

There really wasn’t anywhere in New York Billy would consider peaceful. Even Central Park with its aura of nature couldn’t block out the smells of the city, or its sounds. The closest he’d ever come to peace there was on days shrouded in mists, when the damp cold went right through his boots to the soles of his feet and air pushed wet through wool so his body felt clammy from the inside out. Billy loved the weather when it was like this—loved it because it felt like home, and made him think of Gran and Margaret and tea with cozies.

Peaceful wasn’t an option in New York, not on the streets or at home, where he was more likely than not to come home to a colorful row between Orlando and Dom, or a hyper Elijah full of double mocha something or other bouncing over and around them all. The musician in Billy didn’t really mind all that much—music was everywhere here. But the writer, with wordsmith in him, needed concentration.

And as any city boy knows, the only thing better than silence for thinking is a cacophony.

There were two places Billy would write, depending on his need for inspiration. On a good day, when the muses flowed and he was up, he would take his lyric pads and music book to the little one block park in his neighborhood. He would rush home, ripping off his tie on the subway, and change into his “writing clothes: -- a pare of threadbare jeans, Docs, and one of his prized T-shirts which the posers called ‘vintage’ but which Billy had actually bought AT the concerts, a skinny 16-year-old who looked 12 sneaking around dirty clubs in Glasgow.

On these days, he would write songs about life, and love among the ruins, and the occasional sappy ballad he never showed anyone. Most of these songs would go into his “no one will ever fucking see these” file, but a few he would save for the group writing sessions they brainstormed every few weeks. These were never fully formed—they wouldn’t be until they had bass riff from Dom and a perfectly simple lyric from Elijah. But they were beginnings, seeds from which their music would organically spring when they played together. Orlando would come along sometimes on his nights off, and would lay across a bench with his head in Billy’s lap as Bill wrote, stroking Orlando’s curls absently. If New York wasn’t peaceful, at least Orlando was.

On bad days, when he just wanted to say ‘Fuck you’ to the world, Billy would sit with his notebooks in Bryant Park and watch the yuppies and the tourists and the families and the fucking publishing fuckers. He sat on his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves to show the tattoos on his arms—an anarchy ‘A’ on his left wrist (usually covered by his watch), a half-moon/serpent design peeking out from his right bicep, and, in gothic block letters, the names of his parents up his inner forearms, his father on his right arm for strength, his mother on his left, near his heart.

These days he wrote the bitterness of his life. Songs about selling out, and growing old, and being alone, and Orlando. Orlando, who he had but didn’t want, who he loved but couldn’t need.

Orlando had been brought up well to do, and educated, and boisterous and genteel. He loved danger and gravitated towards people like Dom, who was the oddest best friend imaginable for him. Dom once told Billy that he couldn’t imagine why Orli hung around, and for years from age 16 on, Dom expected Orli to take off, to abandon him, to move on to friends with better futures, better language, better posture. But his loyalty to Dom had never wavered, though it took Dom nearly five years to just accept that and feel comfortable.

Billy could understand that feeling.

Nearly three years ago, when Orlando wandered lost into a Glasgow club and bought him a drink, Billy couldn’t figure what was going on. This tall, pretty Southender with soft eyes and soft hands who seemed in awe of Billy Boyd, small, poor, angry, self-made nothing. He asked Billy for his number, and Billy found he couldn’t say no, and Orli haunted his club dates and his brain for two months. Billy was drawn to Orlando, like everyone was, but couldn’t shake the thought that, for Orlando, he was a passing fad, a bit of punk trash to get out of his system before moving up to MPs and married lawyers. He had that aura of rent-boy, of sex for sale, not from what he said, but from the lazy way he sat back in a chair, or the smile on his face under half-lidded eyes. Billy kept eyeing him suspiciously, wondering what exactly he wanted.

But Orli hadn’t wanted anything so far as Billy could tell. Billy would call him a fucking sellout wanker, and he would just laugh and wink. Billy would drag him to clubs without names where Orli should have felt like an alien, but he bought the house shots and was toasted. Billy stole 60 quid from his wallet once, partially because his rent was overdue, but mainly to see what he would do. Orlando had smacked him the arm and handed him a hundred.

He had, like Dom, figured out that Orlando’s friendship was not fleeing, but firm and fast and he began to depend on it. He called Orli to join him for concerts and dinners and evenings in bars—not dates, just hanging out. Most of the not-dates would end at Billy’s place with lots of talking about pasts and futures. When he finally decided to put a band of his own together, Orli jumped at the chance to join him, and invited Dom, and Stuart. And it had worked. They worked well together, and lived well together when they moved to London. But Orlando had made it pretty clear by London that his interest in Billy was more than friendly. Though Billy hadn’t noticed until one day after practice when Dom handed him a beer and said “If you don’t shag him soon, mate, he’s going to fucking explode.” Which got the hint across.

And maybe they would have, maybe Billy would have told Orlando that he was the most beautiful boy he had ever seen. Maybe he would have said all the songs he’d written in the past few months had been about Orlando. That he had memorized the tilt of his head when he laughed, the calluses on his fingers from guitar strings. That he could tell from the flash of Orlando’s eyes if he was about to get angry, that he sometimes provoked him just to see the flash. That Orlando made him feel bigger and taller and MORE than anything had since his parents died. That he could love Orlando just for breathing.

Maybe he would have said it all.

But one day, Orlando fell. And Billy felt it again. The feeling he hadn’t felt in nearly twenty years, the one that had driven him most of his life. The tightness in his chest and the emptiness in his brain and the nausea from the smells of the hospital and the fear. And Billy remembered finally why he didn’t love people. Why he didn’t need them or depend on them or keep them too close.

Orlando walked out of the hospital on his own, a miracle boy, but Billy had all the reminder he needed of loss and grief and pain and fear, and he knew that he could never love Orlando like Orlando deserved to be loved. He would always keep him a little to far and Orli would always want to pull a little to close. He tried to tell Orlando all this once, but the words just wouldn’t come.

So he would sit in his wrinkled dress clothes, surrounded by money and power and freedom and lucky people who didn’t see how lucky they were, and he would seethe and rage, and pour Orlando out of his heart and onto paper. Where Billy could control him, and mold him, and critique and erase and undo. Where Orlando was far, and Billy was safe.  



End file.
